CelluSpots™ - Custom Peptide Arrays

From Membranes to Mini- and Micro-Arrays

The SPOT synthesis technology is well known as a rapid and robust method to generate peptide libraries on membrane supports – particularly on cellulose sheets. INTAVIS has many years of experience in the development of peptide synthesis instruments for both, fully automated SPOT synthesis and parallel synthesis of peptides in a microtiter plate format.

Even though peptide libraries on SPOT membranes are popular in a wide range of screening methods there are three major drawbacks:

The re-usability of SPOT membranes is limited. For some assays they can be used only once.

The production of duplicate peptide SPOT arrays with identical quality is time-consuming and expensive as each membrane must be synthesized individually.

Membranes are large compared to micro arrays on glass slides and require large sample volumes.

INTAVIS now offers CelluSpots™ as a new format to use the advantages of the method but avoid the limitations of SPOT membranes. CelluSpots™ are arrays of peptide-cellulose conjugates spotted on planar surfaces such as glass slides. Peptides are synthesized on a modified cellulose support which can be dissolved after synthesis. The solutions of individual peptides covalently linked to macro molecular cellulose are then spotted onto a surface of choice. After evaporation of the solvent a three-dimensional layer is formed which is not dissolved in aqueous reagents used for standard assays. The three-dimensional structure holds up to 1000 times more peptides per area as compared to conventional monolayer deposition. This shifts the binding equilibrium in a favorable direction for low affinity protein-protein interactions.

Advantages of CelluSpots™ Arrays

numerous identical copies of the same quality can be prepared

smaller sample volumes are needed

high peptide density allows detection of low affinity interactions

chemical properties are comparable to those of the original SPOT membranes

detection by chemiluminescence, autoradiography or enzymatic color development